How to read books online

Written by marianne lafferty

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Read books on the Internet. (books image by palms from Fotolia.com)

In the past few years the number of books available online has increased sharply. Now you just have to Google &ldquo;read books online&rdquo;, and a host of websites appear allowing you to do this. Many of these sites allow you to read books for free. Some let you review or comment on the book you have just read online. The beauty of reading a book online is that it is immediately accessible. You do not have to travel to a library or bookstore to find it. The downside is that text is often harder to read onscreen than on paper.

Skill level:

Easy

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Things you need

Internet connection

Project Gutenberg

Google Books

E-book device

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Instructions

Instructions

1

Visit the Project Gutenberg website. This was the first producer of free electronic books. With this site, you can read more than 32,000 books on your PC for free. In total, the site offers more than 100,000 free books, available through its Partners, Affiliates and Resources. Search the name of the author or title of the book you want to read. Under the section &ldquo;Download this ebook for free&rdquo;, under HTML formatting, click on "Main Site." This produces the full text on your computer screen. There are classic books available, and books in many languages from Afrikaans to Yiddish.

2

Visit the Google Books website. The number of scanned books as of October 2009 was more than 10 million, according to Google. Books are available in every subject from business and economics to travel. There are books in many languages, and even books dating back to the 1400s. You can read the full text of books in the public domain (free to use without paying royalties). Or you can read a limited number of pages of books that are currently on sale (in print). You can search for books by title, author, publisher, subject, publication date or ISBN.

3

Invest in an e-book device. This is the digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. You can carry it around with you, just as you can a book. The Kindle device made by Amazon is one of the most popular e-book brands. It was released on November 19, 2007.